Four Reasons to Love Old Navy’s Instagram

“hi, fashion; hi, family; hi, fun; #sayhi” are the first words you see when you check out Old Navy’s Instagram.

Or maybe it’s the 2,147 posts and 1.2 million followers you see first. (And if you follow them on Instagram, you probably follow them on Facebook, where you’re one of nearly 10 million followers, an impressive number for sure.) Then you see the fun emojis: a dress, rainbow, watermelon and a waving hand.

Old Navy is telling us they’re all about style, diversity, fun and friendliness. They create great content for their target audience, and it underscores their overall brand messaging and positioning. Old Navy drives this messaging consistently across social platforms, and their Instagram is the epitome of this consistency.

Building an effective social media extension of your brand is crucial for retail these days. Giants like Amazon aren’t sleeping and sometimes have the ubiquitous privilege of becoming their own verbs. When you want to shop and ship quickly, just “Prime” it.

While not every retailer is directly competing with Amazon, the message of 2017 is still clear: A unique digital presence is paramount to success.

Old Navy’s 1.2 million Instagram followers aren’t a fluke, and users don’t fly through the photos unaware of who Old Navy is. The brand has crafted a unique presence in a tough corner of retail. On Instagram, they’ve teleported that unique brand without any pretense.

Here are four ways that Old Navy consistently drives their brand messaging:

1. Simple, clever language.

Old Navy knows it isn’t high fashion (and doesn’t want to be), so it says “hi” to fashion on its IG masthead. That’s Old Navy’s Viz ID in a nutshell: fun, flirty, comfortable, familiar – clothes and styles that work in almost every situation. The copy on their posts represents the way their audience communicates – it’s the simple text message you send your bestie or the first Snapchat to your crush.

2. Flat lays.

Old Navy knows apparel doesn’t always have to be on a model. In fact, on social, you can do and say way more when clothing becomes the centerpiece of a scene. For a photography-centered social site like IG, flat lays can shout volumes over runway shots.

3. Modeling diversity.

People eventually need to see how clothes actually look—on them. Old Navy is ahead of this curve on social – their models represent a wide array of ages, genders, races and sizes. It’s refreshing, and so many steps in the right direction.

4. Bright lights, big colors.

If you scroll through Old Navy’s Instagram page on a laptop, you get a pastiche of bright, bold colors that radiate a lot of positive light. They pass every emotional color theory test and make it nearly impossible to look away.

After scrolling through Old Navy’s Instagram, it seems like a brand you can hang out with. And that’s exactly the kind of consumer-brand relationship that corporations should be striving to build.

Bob Beshere – I'm an editor and copywriter for Pace. I graduated in 2009 with my Ph.D. in English Literature and Rhetoric from UNCG. After a career …MORE